Trayvon Martin

[Gunny2862]

By the way, disclaimer time, for anyone who thinks I'm some geezer totally divorced from reality... My 6'2'' 17 year old is out tonight, wearing or will probably buy and then wear a new hoodie at a local band "show". The bands tend to favor black as it makes their designs "pop".

 

As always I'll be worried until he gets in, not necessarily because of what he'll do, but because of what anyone else might do. Same way about how I feel in traffic.

 

While he might try to work out the situation if he were attacked, he knows not to be the one who initiates anything.

 

These things DO affect us all...

[Lisabob]

What new "fact" would this be. What I think you're implying is that you don't like that I haven't simply absorbed every allegation made by people who may know Zimmerman, but who weren't there and are speaking, as it were, on background. At best, this is a character witness, not fact.

 

So his neighbor says he's not a racist, or his kindergarten teacher says he always colored inside the lines, whatever. That does not change the undisputed FACT that he fatally shot an unarmed child, after following him around the neighborhood without much of a reason.

 

It is true that I remain quite skeptical of the story his friends and family are now suggesting regarding what happened next, but frankly that is a side issue. Whatever might or might not have happened after he was told to leave the kid alone and let the police handle it, NONE of this would have occurred if he hadn't been riding around armed and evidently, ridiculously suspicious of a child who happened to be walking down the street.

 

I'm leaving it for the time being.

 

 

[Gunny2862]

Okay,

1) a)I don't know about this jurisdiction, but in many jurisdictions if you are riding in the car and you aren't a citizen ride along or working then you are in cuffs.

b)At the time he was going to the station, the officers hadn't completed the poor investigation they did do. He was facing manslaughter charges at the time. Of course he was cuffed for the transporting officers safety.

2) Unless you have seen different video than I did, their is no way to discern his injuries from the poor quality lo resolution security camera video that was pulled from. Anyone who says differently doesn't know about video. (I have been in video for more than a decade).

In addition he would have had access to whatever medical rolled to the scene and been kept there for a while before he was transported - they probably would have cleaned up some of the stuff on his head while evaluating him before turning him over for transport(of course I don't KNOW that any of that happened either, but it's likely).

As to the fountains of Blood you may have expected to geyser all over him, that happens on TV, not in real life, if the shot stops the victims heart, the blood ceases to flow except by gravity.

3)This part is confusing to me also, however, if per his statement, he had followed the victim on foot between a row of houses, between the houses, in the dark, on a rainy night, he may have felt the need to upon returning to his vehicle verify where he was for the report he would be making to the officer he was and had prepared to meet via the non-emergency phone call he had made - read the transcript. Remember he was a Police Academy graduate in '04 and would know the value of a proper report and the waste of time of an inaccurate one. Unfortunately this is when he claims he was followed and attacked by the victim, having disengaged as told and having returned to his vehicle. You can dispute the disengaging, but how does that line up with his having returned to the vehicle he had left to follow the victim?

4) There is no evidence to support your claim. Urban Myth, see above. Possibly a timeline error that is being continually propagated.

5) People lose sight of their objective all the time. How many officers lose sight of their prospective perps in a chase, happens all the time. Especially if the objective knows they're being followed, remember this is on a rainy night not down the middle of the streets or on the sidewalks, but between houses. Easily explainable if the victim chose to go around the front of a house and then followed him back on the other side of the houses, when Zimmerman quit following him as instructed and went back to his vehicle. BUT then NO ONE living knows the truth of this part.

6)And per his statement, and what investigation was done and the non-emergency call timeline, the vicitim interrupted your chain by following Zimmerman back to his truck and verbally assaulting him followed by a battery during which having issued a verbal threat to Zimmermans life he reached for the licensed registered weapon Zimmerman had for his own self defense - plenty of justification for Zimmerman to employ it at that time.(Now of course other than that evidence that can be re-constructed via what physical evidence the officers saw on scene, the location of the shooting, what the witnesses were noted to have given (haven't seen this)on the police report, the injuries the officers noted, the non-emergency call, we are relying on the shooter for the rest of the story here. But don't you think having just killed a human that unless he is some kind of psychopath that he was in some form of shock and probably gave the police everything he knew.

 

Next sentence is a restatement of #6, same answer.

 

Next sentence, Then I either join a group, go to a public place, attempt to ascertain if it is the authorities looking for me in what is as totally non-threatening manner as possible, attempt to evade, OR simply proceed to my destination in as confident a manner as possible - none of which involve confronting whoever is following.

 

Next sentence, see above, unless they are continuing to follow and closing the distance in a place where I feel an imminent threat of attack and especially if that a place doesn't offer me the tactical advantadge, in which case the prudent thing to do is still to attempt get out of there rather than engage an unknown assailant whose intentions are unknown.

 

Next sentence, true, but I bet if you asked him and it was in his power he'd go back in time and handle his part differently.

 

Note that in my rebuttal I pointed out the weak spots, as I've done all along. My early comments noted Zimmermans lack of freedom from prosecution if he hadn't disengaged - which was much less clear then than it appears now. I don't have an agenda here other than being fair to both parties.

 

[Gunny2862]

Lisabob, The fact in question was the refutation of your allegation that he picked out a youth target in broad daylight and walked up and shot him with no provocation.

 

Your post:RE: Trayvon Martin

Posted: Thursday, 3/29/2012: 8:32:02 PM quality I'm sorry, but shooting an unarmed child at point blank range in broad daylight does not fit with my definition of "victim." Unless you are referring to the child who was shot and killed.

 

 

My post:

Are you even going to attempt to keep to the facts of the case?

 

"On the rainy night of Feb 26th"

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpps/news/trayvon-martin-case-george-zimmerman-supporters-dpgapx-20120328-fc_18875731(This message has been edited by Gunny2862)

[Lisabob]

OK so not broad daylight. Doesn't change the rest of it, though, so let me repeat: That does not change the undisputed FACT that he fatally shot an unarmed child, after following him around the neighborhood without much of a reason.

 

---------This is a somewhat different way of thinking about things----

 

I live in MI, where this same thing could easily have happened. Sadly, I have no difficulty imagining this. Statistically speaking, the major metro area that I live near is one of the most racially segregated areas in the country and lots of people harbor a great many stereotypes about each other, partly in result of that segregation. On a personal level, one major reason my son (and I) changed troops about a year ago is that the folks in his former troop were prone to holding - and modeling - all kinds of racist views/speech/actions about others. When it got to the point of adults defending a boy who was repeatedly engaging in neo-Nazi white supremacist speech directed at the only minority kid in the troop, we had enough. Similar experiences in the local public school system caused us to decide to send our child to school in a more diverse environment. There were very few black families in the area, and my son came home from school with some pretty horrible stories about the things that kids were doing and saying to the very few black students. Several teachers more or less verified these stories and basically said there wasn't much they felt they could do about it. I only wish we had moved my son out of that environment sooner.

 

 

Living here as I do, and given that I teach political science, I frequently teach a segment of a course on civil rights movements. As part of that we explore this region's postwar history of "defended communities" to better understand how and why neighborhoods today remain so strongly racially segregated. From the 1940s-70s many neighborhoods established "community boosters" or "development associations" whose sole and explicit purpose was to keep black people out (and sometimes, Jewish people too). They used violence, intimidation, and fear mongering to do it, and it worked quite well. Many of these groups set up **neighborhood watch** groups, allegedly to protect property and deter petty crime, but in fact (and this is very well documented), these groups frequently engaged in and encouraged vandalism and worse (arson) of properties owned by blacks, or by whites who were accused of being too sympathetic toward blacks. In some cases these groups had regular armed patrols that circulated neighborhoods at night.

 

Now when I teach that segment of the course, most of my white students and some (but not most) of my non-white students are totally shocked. My white students tend to say "yeah but that was years ago. Things are different today." Many of my black students have family stories that have been handed down by their grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles about something like this that happened to them, so today's kids in the black community around here tend to know something about this, even though we're talking about a time decades before most of them were born.

 

Right now, I am wondering how different things really are, today, and whether the whole concept of "neighborhood watch" groups is just too deeply flawed by history. If neighborhood watch members have a right to do what Zimmerman did (by which I mean following around people who they deem are "suspicious" in large part because they simply look different) then what message does that send? It seems to me that to be a young black male and to do nothing but walk in a white neighborhood is as dangerous today in some places, as it would have been in, say, Dearborn, MI in the 1950s.

 

So I suspect that some of the upset about this whole situation is that a lot of folks aren't seeing this as part of a larger picture. It is a terrible tragedy that this one child was killed, when all of this might have been avoided if the adult involved hadn't been armed and following him around in the first place. And it is an even bigger issue that we don't know or understand others' fears and experiences, which might lead to very different reactions and seeing this as part of an on-going, historically rooted, problem.

 

 

 

 

 

[moosetracker]

Sorry Gunny, but clean up and first aid for a broken nose and head wound so severe it needed stitches, would require some bandaging, to the nose & back of head.. and would result in bleeding, head wounds are known to bleed profusely for the simplist of cuts..

 

Unless they had Jesus Christ as the paramedic that treated Zimmermons wounds, and he was healed with his touch. The video shows that if he suffered any injury at all, it was not as severe as the claims reported by police and Zimmerman's lawyer.

[OldGreyEagle]

I am going to ask something that may seem to be off topic, but I really think it is related and that is, Does anybody know how many kids 17 and under have been fatally shot since Trayon Martin died and what is being done to stop it?

 

Now, I don't know how many have died but I am guessing some. Where is the outrage for these dead children? DO they all not derserve it?

 

Any preventable death (and yes, this was preventable) is abhorrent but to try someone in the press or on the Forum seems unscoutlike. Zimmerman's guilt or lack thereof will be ascertained by the system.

 

We need to work on a Society where such things could not happen

[Gunny2862]

Thank you for your personal story, it shows some background as to how you came to develop your perspective.

 

I come from an area in MO where Black people were treated hideously, kept clearly in a second class situation, politically manipulated by both parties, public lynchings for crimes real and perceived, homes burnt and families evicted not just from their homes but from their communities and towns en mass, in the night. Most left the area, many will not come back even today, not to surprising given the history.

 

As I grew up there was the "downtown school" where 95% of the black population attended and the other 5% were attending in relation to their homes and their parents wishes at four other schools. Not a lot of inter-racial interaction since I didn't attend the downtown school..

 

As I entered the Military I found a lot of people who had negative racial stereotypes and were bound to keep them, I worked to shed mine by trying to interact and find out about people. My best friends in Boot Camp were a Vietnamese immigrant who barely knew enough English to get by in Boot Camp(not much vocabulary required by the trainees), a Guatemalan immigrant and the Black guy who might have happily punched me himself, but kept the rest of the brothers from going after me because "Hey, the idiot is at least trying".

There were times post boot camp where my attempts to find out about and integrate my own thoughts have gotten me punched - would have been much easier to hang with "my own", problem for me was that I saw Green Marines and not racially segregated people in their enclaves.

 

My wife and I have made decisions about the kids education based on our experiences(she is Prior Military also and has a Masters in Counseling, and placed him out of home(lily white)(location of home driven by economics) district into districts that placed him in diverse situations.

 

The Martin/Zimmmerman interaction has plenty of problems without race being injected into it.

 

The worst problem is that a youth and what ever potential he had for society(although in this state, he, like my son would be termed an adult)died.

 

The second worst problem by the nature of how many people it's affecting is this biased conversation that isn't taking the other point of view into account at all, and most of the discussion is based on either racial bias or pure emotion and third hand inaccurate accounts of the events of that evening rather than gathering and looking at the facts - which 30+ days later are still coming in dribs and drabs, good job by the media..., not.

 

The last two are dependent on who the two individuals involved were - something we may never know.

 

The third worst problem is that if the youth turns out to have been a Sheep, that the Sheep dog killed one who was to be protected - may God have mercy on his soul, because no one else will, not even the other Sheepdogs.

 

The fourth worst problem is that Zimmerman, if he was a Sheepdog, who encountered a juvenile Wolf, found out that the Sheep will turn on you in a heartbeat if they can't tell the Wolf from a Sheep.

[BS-87]

moosetracker -

 

You mean a gash in the back of the head like this?

 

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Zimmerman-ABC-video-enhanced-caption.jpg

[Gunny2862]

OGE, that question has been asked but not answered.

 

Corollary questions include why the outrage here when shootings between suspected gang members as part of suspected gang activity have killed complete bystanders, children playing on their front porch.

At least in this case there are allegations of a potential death threat, an attack and mutual combat. That child playing on her own porch deserves this much attention or more - a true and clear innocent victim. Wheres the outrage for her?

[Gunny2862]

BS-87, do you know the source of those pictures? The only video I've seen was black and white and had nowhere near even the un-enhanced picture's detail.

 

Besides, as I'm sure someone else might point out - how do we know that's not just a skinfold on his head, there are folks who have them, if it were the gash why wouldn't it be bandaged? Edit is this answer a second thought, More and more ER's and EMT's are closing clean cuts with Super glue - thus the lack of Blood and of a Bandage.(This message has been edited by Gunny2862)

[Beavah]

Yah, Gunny, Zimmerman is an inherently biased witness with every interest in spinning and lying, eh? That's on top of the rather flawed judgment and perspective he demonstrated in the first place and (by his own admission) throughout the encounter.

 

The "facts" are

 

Trayvon Martin was an innocent, unarmed kid with no record goin' about his own lawful business.

Trayvon Martin had no drugs or alcohol in his system.

George Zimmerman has a record of complaints for assaultin' an undercover officer during a bar confrontation, and for domestic violence.

Zimmerman did not attend Police Academy, but rather a citizens education program that was substantially shorter than police academy training and did not provide certification.

George Zimmerman, based solely on "appearance" called in a report that incorrectly accused Trayvon of being on drugs and an ***hole who always gets away, along with perhaps other names.

George Zimmerman ignored the clear recommendation and direction of the police dispatcher, and pursued Trayvon by vehicle and on foot.

Trayvon attempted to run away from his pursuer.

In the end, based on the testimony of his girlfriend there were words between the two.

There may have been a scuffle in which Zimmerman may have suffered some relatively minor injuries.

Someone cried for help.

Trayvon was shot dead by Zimmerman.

There is apparently no blood alcohol test on Zimmerman despite that being normal police procedure everywhere I'm familiar with.

The police failed to follow even the most obvious steps to identify Trayvon and notify his family.

The lead detective on the scene did not buy Zimmerman's story and recommended prosecution.

 

Now, if you've never been EMS at a shooting scene, you'll just have to trust me that if EMS cleans up any sort of real head wound they're goin' to put a bandage on it, and if yeh have a broken nose yeh almost always have either cuts or soft tissue injury/swelling to that area of the face, even more so if you've been hit multiple times.

 

I don't think Zimmerman was a racist. I think too often us white folks get defensive and don't make a distinction between "being a racist" (deliberately and consciously hating or demeaning people of other races) and being prejudiced (unthoughtfully or unconsciously making decisions about someone based on their race). I think he fell into the trap of not recognizing his own very real prejudices and controlling them, and then of exercising phenomenally poor judgment in seeking and precipitating a confrontation based on those prejudices.

 

That is at least manslaughter.

 

Edited to add:

 

BS-87 is once again posting some nonsense from an extreme partisan blog run by amateur hacks. While humorous in a pathetic sort of way, it's easy to discount.

 

OGE, I think da issue is at least in part the apparent lackadaisical and unprofessional conduct by the police department and the county prosecutor. Can you find me a 17 year old who was shot while going to the store who laid on a slab for three days without identification until the time had elapsed for the family to be able to file a formal missing person's report? When they had his cell phone? Or any time an unarmed 17 year old has been shot without drug and alcohol tests of the shooter and a full investigation?

 

I think it was the ongoin' failure of the police department that raised this to being a national issue of interest.(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[Gunny2862]

Well Beav, that's great subjective interpretation.

 

You are posting unsourced facts I'm unaware of that haven't appeared in in any media coverage I've seen.

 

I think if asked I can go back and find media reports that show the facts I've presented, or that back my opinions - although I've had a few subjective items in the mix also. I've been posting links to back up my thoughts all along.

 

Where's yours? None so far but plenty of speculation.

[Gunny2862]

I absolutely agree that the PD needs investigation, that this has gotten here because of the lack of, or shody investigation is atrocious.

[CalicoPenn]

Speaking of facts not in evidence:

 

"the vicitim interrupted your chain by following Zimmerman back to his truck and verbally assaulting him followed by a battery during which having issued a verbal threat to Zimmermans life he reached for the licensed registered weapon Zimmerman had for his own self defense"

 

That's not a fact - that's allegedly Zimmerman's side of the story as presented by family members - we don't have Trayvon's side of the story because Zimmerman killed Trayvon. We have no other eyewitnesses that say Zimmerman was returning to his truck and Martin started following him. Just Zimmerman's word - and a good investigator doesn't believe a shooters story right out of the box.

 

"On that note, Realizing we are relying on the living persons testimony in the real situation, the deceased didn't ask why he was following, a good citizen would understand that in a new neighborhood the neighborhood watch wouldn't know who they were and they might stick out and thus come under observation, he asked if the other "had a problem"."

 

A "good citizen"? What the heck is that supposed to imply, that Trayvon wasn't a good citizen? Most people would call me a good citizen - if some clown started following me, I don't think the first thought would be "neighborhood watch" - I'd be wondering what this clown's problem was, and would likely confront them. I'd probably even demand to know if the other guy "had a problem". When I think of Neighborhood Watch, I think of someone at home noticing something suspicious and calling the cops - I don't think of some armed one-man posse out patrolling the neighborhood.

 

Zimmerman is alive to make all sorts of claims and allegations - that he was confronted, that he was returning to his truck, that Trayvon threw the first punch, that Trayvon was reaching for his gun (how did Trayvon even know Zimmerman had a concealed gun?), that Trayvon was beating him for a minute before he pulled his gun. No one is around to counter those claims - and that's all they are, claims - not fact - claims.

 

Beavah spells out what we know as facts pretty well - Zimmerman called the police to report someone he thought was suspicious, Zimmerman followed Trayvon, even after being told it wasn't neccessary, Zimmerman ultimately shot and killed Trayvon. Everything that Zimmerman has said is not fact, just story, and what his family has said is not fact, just hearsay.

 

In the meantime, how do we prepare our Scouts? Don't wear hoodies, don't buy skittles, don't carry a swiss army knife (it has a screwdriver - could be called a "burglary tool"), run like a deer if they think they're being followed?

 

As disgusting as it was that Zimmerman was not arrested, with the case being investigated and a judge/jury deciding if it was self defense, I understand that's a result of Florida law - which, as I understand it, opens up police departments to civil lawsuits with huge damage awards if a person claims self defense, is arrested and brought to trial, and is subsequently found to have acted in self-defense (a law which is, in itself, disgusting), I think the most disgusting thing coming out of this is the continuing attempt to paint Trayvon as a thug, as a bad citizen, as the bad guy here, when he was, to all accounts, a typical and normal 17 year old boy who sometimes gets in trouble at school (I think about when I went to school - an empty baggie would have gotten you a lecture, now, even sniffing a beer could get you suspended). Trayvon is the victim - of Zimmerman and of some really bad law in Florida.

 

It's become a common trope to use racism as a factor in incidents like this and I try not to automatically assume racism when others are quicker to make that judgement - but that doesn't stop me from wondering if racism is part of the story. I do think there might be some racism going on here - but I'm not sure it's Zimmerman that's the racist here. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some latent racism going on with some of the police officers - it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the investigation was less rigorous because someone thought it's just another dead black kid. Where I do think the racism is coming from is from outside the event. I think we're seeing it in this smear job against Trayvon - and I wonder if that's because the defenders of these stand your ground and self defense and concealed weapons laws know that these laws have just been exposed as very bad law by a situation that they thought would be a "no brainer" to folks and that they need to make Trayvon out to be just another black gangbanger rather than someone who gains a lot of sympathy.